The investments for this joint venture come mainly from internal funding and local fundraising with a total of US$18.5 million to be utilised over the next five years.

“We are delighted to help establish this partnership as one of the initiatives to strengthen the digital technology collaboration between Malaysian and Indonesian companies, which we feel is necessary to achieve positive impact innovations for both countries,” said MDEC Enterprise Development Division vice president Gopi Ganesalingam.

MAI aims to lift the burden banks carry when investing to deploy a new ATM in Indonesia by launching a true-sharing based ATM or ATM Club. The cost of a new machine ranges from US$7,000 for regular ATMs to US$20,000 for deposit or withdrawal ones.

Operating on a true-sharing basis, the ATM developed by MAI allows bank partners to provide their services without investing in new machines. The bank partners will also be able to deploy off-premises virtual aliases by using this ATM.

“With lower operating costs and free services for customers, MAI expects this service will make it easier for Indonesian banks to expand their services to more areas,” said MDT Innovation Sdn Bhd country manager Yudi Kusman.

According to Statista, in 2015, there were approximately 53.5 ATMs per hundred thousand adults in Indonesia.

“It ideally requires 150,000 ATMs so we can reach people throughout Indonesia. To tackle this, we also built a mutual partnership with Alfamart (Indonesian convenience stores) which will provide space for ATMs and we will help them increase sales via joint marketing,” said PT Interbanx Global Net director Daniel Suisa.

Yudi says that the ATM will allow bank partners to save on costs and gain branding exposure as the full features of each bank’s original menu will be displayed.

“When a bank agrees to join us, we will connect their ATM systems and displays to our machine. Their bank’s logo will also be affixed to every ATM booth,” he explains.

Given that the machines will be accessible to all related-banks’ cards holders, there are naturally security concerns to be addressed.

“Every bank’s ATM system is transparent. All we have to do is secure a user’s ATM pin because it is sensitive.”

In addition, these machines will also carry the latest Internet of Things (IoT) technology developed by MDT Innovations. This technology will have several features such as recording usage patterns, transaction history, and customer interaction with the machine.

This data will allow banking service providers to understand patterns in customer transactions and enable to offer other services tailored to customer needs.

MDT Innovations will deploy 1,000 ATMs across Alfamart outlets in Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, and Bekasi in November 2017 and plans to deploy 1,000 ATMs every year until 2021.

“We will deploy 5,000 ATMs in the next five years but it all depends on how it will grow after it is first deployed in November this year,” he explains.

When asked about their strategy to attract more bank partners and educate consumers, Yudi says that banks will consider all the benefits this innovation can offer especially in terms of helping them to cut costs.

“We will only charge the bank based on transaction fees. Our fee will be lower than the market-standard fee and they do not need to make any investment. And to educate the users, our bank partners will help us to spread the information to their customers.”